Chapter 6 - The Missing Fifteen Minutes
Adrian DeLuca arrived at the mansion at nine the next morning.
He wasn't dragged in.
He wasn't surrounded.
He walked through the front doors carrying coffee and wearing the irritated expression of a man who had been summoned away from Christmas breakfast.
“What happened?”
Roman was waiting in the library.
So was Marco.
I was not supposed to be there.
Roman had specifically told me to rest.
I specifically ignored him.
Adrian noticed me immediately.
“Claire.”
His expression softened.
“I heard what happened. Are you okay?”
“Getting there.”
He looked at Roman.
“Why did your message sound like somebody died?”
“No one did.”
Roman gestured toward a chair.
“Sit.”
Adrian's smile faded.
He sat.
Roman slid a printed access log across the table.
Adrian read it.
Then looked up.
“So?”
“Your credentials opened my office at 9:11 Christmas Eve.”
Adrian frowned.
“I wasn't in your office.”
“The system says you were.”
“The system is wrong.”
“Where were you?”
“In the ballroom.”
Marco opened the event footage.
“Not between nine-oh-eight and nine-twenty-three.”
Adrian leaned back.
“You're tracking my bathroom breaks now?”
“Where were you?”
Adrian's irritation sharpened.
“On the east terrace.”
“In a blizzard?”
“Smoking.”
“You quit six months ago.”
“I started again.”
Roman watched him.
“Show me the cigarettes.”
“What?”
“If you started again, show me.”
Adrian stared.
Then laughed.
“This is ridiculous.”
Roman didn't.
Adrian's face changed.
“Are you accusing me of something?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
“You think I tried to kill your maid?”
Roman's voice went cold.
“Don't call her that.”
The room shifted.
Adrian noticed.
So did I.
Roman continued.
“I think someone used your credentials to enter my office and disable cameras. I'm asking whether that person was you.”
“It wasn't.”
“Then who has your access?”
“No one.”
“Think carefully.”
Adrian rubbed his jaw.
Then froze.
“What?”
“My phone.”
Roman waited.
“I lost it for maybe twenty minutes during the party.”
“When?”
“Around nine.”
Marco leaned forward.
“Where?”
“Coat room.”
Adrian had left his phone charging in a private family coat room while greeting guests.
When he returned, it was beneath his coat instead of beside it.
At the time, he assumed someone had moved it.
His digital key could be accessed through the phone.
“Who was near the coat room?”
“Half the house.”
Marco checked camera footage.
Most guests passed the corridor.
But one person entered the room alone at 9:03.
Vivian.
She emerged ninety seconds later.
Roman watched the footage twice.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
Said nothing.
Finally:
“Send it.”
A photograph appeared on his screen.
Daniel Voss.
Captured less than thirty minutes earlier at a gas station seventy miles north.
He was alive.
Driving another vehicle.
And he wasn't alone.
The passenger was a woman in her fifties.
Marco recognized her first.
“Evelyn Shaw.”
I didn't.
Roman did.
“Mercer's former comptroller.”
She had worked for Howard for twelve years.
Then suddenly resigned shortly before my father died.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“Nothing publicly.”
Roman expanded the photograph.
Evelyn looked frightened.
Not kidnapped exactly.
But not comfortable.
“Why would Voss be with her?”
Marco answered.
“Maybe they're cleaning up old problems.”
The phrase made my skin crawl.
Roman immediately ordered investigators to locate Evelyn.
Then Adrian asked the obvious question.
“What's Claire's father got to do with Mercer?”
Roman looked at me.
I nodded.
He explained.
Adrian became more serious with every sentence.
At the mention of Bennett Industrial Systems, he interrupted.
“I know that company.”
I stared.
“How?”
“My uncle used them.”
Roman's father.
Alessandro DeLuca.
“What for?”
“Security installation. Old headquarters.”
Roman looked surprised.
“When?”
“Late nineties, early two-thousands.”
“Why don't I remember this?”
“Because you were in college.”
Adrian looked at me.
“Your father designed restricted elevator access for the DeLuca office.”
My mouth went dry.
The connection became larger.
Dad hadn't accidentally encountered Howard Mercer.
He had worked in buildings where Mercer and DeLuca businesses operated.
Adrian continued.
“There was some scandal.”
Roman narrowed his eyes.
“What scandal?”
“I don't know. Uncle Alessandro fired a contractor because financial information disappeared.”
“Bennett?”
“No.”
Adrian thought.
“Mercer's people.”
Roman stood.
“Explain.”
Howard Mercer had once managed several legitimate investment structures for Roman's father.
Eight years earlier, suspicious transfers were discovered.
Alessandro ended the relationship.
Months later, he suffered a stroke and retired.
Howard rebuilt his business independently.
Nobody publicly accused him of wrongdoing.
“Why wasn't I told?”
“You were told Mercer had accounting disagreements with your father.”
“That's not the same thing.”
“I only learned details later.”
Roman turned toward the fire.
Anger radiated from him.
The Mercers hadn't recently targeted DeLuca assets.
Howard may have been positioning himself for years.
Then Marco received another message.
“Roman.”
A black sedan had been found abandoned outside Albany.
Daniel Voss's second vehicle.
No Daniel.
No Evelyn.
But inside the trunk was Evelyn's purse.
Her wallet.
Phone.
And something else.
A small digital voice recorder.
The final recording began at 8:52 that morning.
Evelyn's voice trembled.
“If you're hearing this, Daniel found me.”
Breathing.
Then:
“Howard Mercer thinks James Bennett's archive still exists.”
I couldn't move.
“He believes Claire Bennett has it.”
Another breath.
“He is wrong.”
Roman leaned closer.
Evelyn continued.
“James gave the archive to someone else before he died.”
A car door slammed in the recording.
She spoke faster.
“If Claire is alive, tell her the answer is inside Saint Michael's.”
Then another voice.
Daniel.
“Evelyn?”
The recording stopped.
I stared at Roman.
“Saint Michael's what?”
Nobody knew.
A church.
A school.
A cemetery.
There were hundreds.
But Adrian suddenly looked at the photograph of my father again.
“Wait.”
He pointed toward something in the background.
Behind Dad and Howard Mercer was a stone church.
Above its door, barely visible:
ST. MICHAEL.
Roman turned to me.
“Do you recognize it?”
I did.
It took a second.
But then I remembered why.
My father had taken me there every Christmas when I was a child.
A tiny church in the Bronx.
He stopped going after my mother died.
And I'd never understood why.
Until now.
May you like
Because somewhere inside the church where my father once taught me to light Christmas candles, he may have hidden the evidence that could destroy Howard Mercer.
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